1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to WiGig Serial Extension (WSE) communications for universal serial bus (USB) devices.
2. Background
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard for attaching electronic peripheral devices to a host computing device. USB was designed to replace older serial and parallel ports on computers, since these were not standardized and called for a multitude of device drivers to be developed and maintained. Although USB was originally designed for personal computers, its popularity has prompted it also to become commonplace on video game consoles, PDAs, portable DVD players, mobile phones, and other popular electronic devices.
USB was designed to allow peripherals to be connected without the need to plug expansion cards into the computer's expansion bus and to improve plug-and-play capabilities by allowing devices to be hot-swapped, wherein devices are connected or disconnected without powering down or rebooting the computer. When a device is first connected, the host enumerates and recognizes it, and loads the device driver needed for that device. USB can connect peripherals such as mouse devices, keyboards, scanners, digital cameras, printers, external storage devices, etc., and has become the standard connection method for many of these devices.
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (sometimes referred to as WiGig) is an industry organization developing standards for multi-gigabit wireless communication amongst consumer electronics, handheld devices, and personal computers, utilizing the unlicensed 60 GHz spectrum. The WiGig specification form the basis for the 802.11ad standard, which is a recent amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standards. The WiGig specification defines the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers for an architecture providing IP networking over the 60 GHz wireless channel.
Some of the standards developed by WiGig include the WiGig Bus Extension (WBE), the WiGig Serial Extension (WSE), and the WiGig Display Extension (WDE). Among these, WSE is designed to support USB data delivery over a single-hop wireless communication link between a USB Host and a USB Hub/Peripheral.
As the WSE specifications are relatively new, development of enhanced features continues to be a goal of many involved, for improved functionality or convenience for the users of the USB devices.